


If thou be'st born to strange sights

by tribbled



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Casual kidnapping, Ducks, Humor, I don't know how to rate, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pre-Slash, Teen and Up rating for swearing only at this point, The Power of Rambling, ducks as an essential theme
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tribbled/pseuds/tribbled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Stiles discovers his magic, plus one time he didn't need it.</p><p>"It started as things typically do for Stiles these days: toting a werewolf, wounded and bleeding, to some emergency help in his handy dandy car. Because it’s not like anyone else in the pack has a car that can be bled in, oh no. ..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lazarus Car Incident

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so:
> 
> 1\. I was, and still am tbh, in a weird state of nostalgia for teen wolf fanfiction. Like, the era of fic produced and set in the time period before or during the beginning of season three. The following is basically a nostalgia baby of that, set in a nebulous Alternate Universe after season two canon, with me ignoring everything I didn't like about season three. (Not that I don't like some of the later seasons... but basically the only things I like about the later seasons are the new characters and a bit of the mythology. Sorry not sorry.)
> 
> 2\. Because of above, honestly this fic has probably been done before or closely inspired by other fics/tropes. Imitation is the highest compliment, or something. 
> 
> 3\. Because I am a nerd and like to think about different fictional systems of magic, the idea for this is loosely inspired by Sophie Hatter from Howl's Moving Castle (the book not the gorgeous Studio Ghibli film). Except Stiles' gift isn't bullying...
> 
> 4\. If this is appallingly awful or OOC, know that this is my first real fanwork, so um, let's just blame it on that for the sake of my pride. Also, completely unbeta'd. 
> 
> 5\. I have half of this written already, but whether or not I update/finish in the next week or in the next month depends on how well I handle NaNoWriMo this year.
> 
> Title is a line from John Donne's Song "Go catch a falling star".

[1]

It started as things typically do for Stiles these days: toting a werewolf, wounded and bleeding, to some emergency help in his handy dandy car. Because it’s not like anyone else in the pack has a car that can be bled in, oh no.

Not like someone has a really fast, flashy sports car the poor plebeians could use, because heaven forbid we offend the gods of leather and expensive aftershave by tainting their domain with common blood, oh no.

“ _Stiles_ ,” hisses Derek from the back seat, shockingly not the one currently bleeding. “You’ve made your point, shut up and _drive_.”

“Oh look, sourwolf has learned _intonation_ ,” is the only response Stiles can manage to that, really.

Isaac makes a weird, half-baked chuckle-snort that could be described as a bark if you wanted your throat torn out, and then mutters “Ow,” while Derek snarls at him and struggles to hold his intestines inside where they’re supposed to be. If Stiles thought about it, he’d be impressed. If he had a snarly alpha holding his guts and that much pain, he’d say a hell of a lot worse than “Ow.” As it is, he’s driving, and the smell alone is a bit much, so he’s not thinking about it, thank you.

They’re skidding around a bend, just reaching the last stretch until the animal clinic’s vicinity, when something… thunks. It’s not a thunk of impending death, not this week’s supernatural freak show banging on the roof. No, it’s more of a clunking thunk that Stiles can feel shuddering through the wheel and pedals.

“Oh God, oh no, Oh God.” The car… shudders to a halt. In the middle of the road. On the outskirts of Beacon Hills suburbia. At 3-ass-o-clock in the morning.  
Stiles has no idea what his face is doing, but he catches the expression on Derek’s in the rearview mirror and thinks it must be something like that.

He’s not completely heartless, okay? Yes, the hollow swooping sensation of doom that’s settled in him like the world’s heaviest stone is mostly because he fucking loves his car, but he’s also worried about Isaac. Maybe. Kind of. He also doesn’t want to be stranded and vulnerable with Derek’s helpless wolf-duckling and a freaked-out mother-duck Derek, but that’s just pragmatic, okay.

Isaac’s done the only practical thing he can do right now by passing out. Any other time, Stiles would make a dig in about swooning maidens and—scratch that, he’s totally bringing this up later. Because Isaac’s going to live, dammit, even if it’s just so Stiles can embarrass him in front of the other ducklings.

“Stiles! Make it work!” Derek honest-to-god actually does bark this time.

“Me? What do you expect me to do? I’m not a mechanic, dude!”

Derek just gives him that face with his muppet eyebrows that Stiles has learned means yes, Derek is freaking out, and yes, he’s expecting miracles, chop chop. Stiles is so appalled that it actually helps smother his rising hysteria, replaced instead with the huffy, offended pride that Derek so frequently inspires.

Spurred, he snaps his gaping mouth closed and snatches the emergency tool box he keeps stashed under the passenger seat, slamming outside.

He throws down the toolbox and pops open the car’s hood. Acrid smoke billows out and chokes him, coating the back of his throat and nostrils, which, yeah, doesn’t help with the life-endangering panic situation. Stiles coughs and flaps around his hands for what feels like an hour, but probably only a few minutes, while Derek does something useless, like trying to heal an alpha-inflicted wound with only blind stubbornness and bad life decisions.

What’s under the hood… doesn’t look so good. Stiles doesn’t know a lot about cars, but he knows that black sludge everywhere is probably bad. This… is probably the end.

“Nooo,” Stiles moans low in the back of his throat like _he’s_ the wounded animal. “No, baby, don’t do this to me.” He flops to his knees. “You’re so much better than this, have been through so much more. You’ve taken on werewolves and you’ve taken on a damn kanima, okay, baby? The supernatural is your bitch, old age is your bitch, and you’re my girl, my awesome, kickass girl, just stay with me, okay? Okay.”

The car belches more smoke. Defeated, Stiles slumps his shoulders.

To make this Oscar-winning moment even more perfect, pressure breaks in the clammy air around him and there’s a tell-tale prickle on the skin at the back of Stiles’ neck. It starts to rain. Perfect.

One of the doors creaks open and slams shut but Stiles just keeps kneeling. It’s probably not safe to leave the hood open with the rain but Stiles can’t bring himself to get up.

His shoulder is being shaken roughly. “What are you doing?” Derek demands. “We need to go!”

Stiles’s laugh sounds foreign. “Dude. Just call Scott, take our chances waiting, okay? It’s the only option.”

Derek just looks at him like he’s crazy. The rain chooses at that moment to let up. Then Stiles’s right arm is being tugged and his body goes along with and he’s about to snap at Derek, something caustic and awful, when his attention falls inevitably to his ruined, dead car.

Except it’s not. Dead, that is.

The jeep looks fine, looks just like it did the last time he took her to the mechanic, if not better, even. Shinier.

Then he’s being manhandled to the driver’s seat.

“ _Drive_ ,” Derek says like he can verbally press the word into skin, mother-duck hysteria tightening the skin around his eyes. Gotta love that intonation.

Stiles drives.

Getting there is half the journey. Once at Deaton’s, there’s the horror of moving Isaac inside and the horror of Deaton doing some voodoo shit to pull his ass back from death. All weirdness is shoved to the back of Stiles’s mental drawer of Supernatural Shit. He only remembers the incident later, much later, when he’s lying awake in a cold sweat and can feel a tickle in the back of his throat. The result of getting soaked through while on adrenaline and fear and only a handful of hours of sleep.

He doesn’t think much of it. Can’t think much of it. The Lazarus Car Incident gets upgraded from the Supernatural Shit mental drawer to List of Supernatural Shit That Needs Attention After the Life-Threatening Priorities. Coming up with better list names is number one on the list.

He turns over and continues to not sleep.


	2. The Damn Rambling Man

[2]

 

The second time Stiles noticed an Incident is when the alpha pack decides that their best next move is to kidnap the puny human outside the grocery store. At least they were nice enough to do it during the weekend.

“Seriously?” is all he gets out before two figures descend on him from the parking lot’s shadowy corners. “You can’t at least let me get these eggs home? No, okay,” he mumbles through the cloth being shoved into his face and arm looping roughly around his neck.

Chloroform. So tacky. The hunters had been way more straight-forward—hell, Erica’s car trouble gag had at least been obnoxiously funny.

“Three out of ten,” he says before passing out.

-

He wakes up strapped to a hard, metal chair in the middle of some vast, gross, abandoned building. From the junk shoved close to the walls and the high up windows, Stiles is sure he’s in one of those forgotten-factories-turned-warehouse that Beacon Hills is infested with. What can he say, the recession hit them hard.

It’s a step better than someone’s torture basement, way more glamorous. His villain rating goes up a smidge.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” comes a smoothly posh voice from the shadows before the speaker steps dramatically into a patch of moonlight.

So the henchmen are chips off the old block. Stiles resists rolling his eyes because he likes his head attached.

He’s met this guy before, sort of. Leader of the alpha pack—which, how does that even work, fucking werewolves—and is indulgently dramatic but also doesn’t mess around. Stiles may not have had a face to face conversation with him, but he watched him gut Isaac like a fish.

“What do you want with me?” Stiles asks, because it’s expected.

“Stilinski, isn’t it?” Deucalion says. He steps closer, blind eyes focused on the sound of Stiles’ pounding heart. He does Stiles the courtesy of not pretending to need the walking stick in his right hand. “The sheriff’s boy. Authority issues and an inability to keep clear of trouble.” He taps two clawed fingers against the top of his stick. “It is not so much what we want with you, but what you hold, what you mean.”

Deucalion leans his head forward, and when did he get so close? He holds his face inches in front of Stiles’s.

Stiles stares into cloudy eyes and is helplessly, irritatingly intimidated. He wishes this got easier with repetition.

A hand moves from the stick, and now one of those claws is tapping over his heart.

“It is the heart that guides the wolf, that is true north for our kind. Many think that it is the moon, but Mother Luna only exposes what we might deny. The trouble that the Hale pack has caused and will cause must be stopped. Tell me, Stiles, what do you think will happen to Scott and Derek once we pluck their heart from them?”

Stiles stares.

He thinks.

He says, “Oh my god, you think I’m their heart?!”

Deucalion stiffens.

Shit. “Not that that’s completely unfounded, like, I totally get that for Scott, okay? I pull his ass out of the fire all the time, but, um, I’m probably not his heart? If we’re thinking _Wizard of Oz_ , I’m more like his fake high school diploma. And I don’t even know where you’re getting this from for Derek.”

Deucalion pulls back at the force of Stiles’ rambling, which is fair, and his upper lip pulls back as well. On anyone else, Stiles would say that the expression is disgruntled.

“Do not distract me, human. We have observed your pack. You are their guide, you are the center of trust they orbit, you are their watcher.”

“Okay, Buffy references aside,” Stiles tries to flap his hands but is foiled by the actual chains they used, Jesus. “Yes, I am totally Scott’s BFF and therefore like a weird, BFF in-law to the other betas because Scott has kind of adopted Derek’s pack? Their relationship is lots of stupid rescuing with too much posturing thrown in, I don’t get it, and honestly, I don’t really get why you’re here to ruin it?”

Deucalion stares in a way that means any other person would be blinking or shaking their head. Used to it, Stiles does what he does best: he keeps rambling. He is the damn rambling man.

“You can’t expect me to believe that all underground werewolf culture is violent and uncivilized, okay? Sure, this pack is new and stupid, and people keep dying, but it’s not our fault, we all got caught up in the stupid history and supernatural happenings of this town. Actually, compared to what would’ve happened if we _hadn’t_ been around, I think we’ve been dealing with this pretty well!”

The alpha’s lip is drawing up again. He’s losing him. Focus, Stilinski! Try another tactic! “I mean, I can tell you’re really important! Why you want to deal with a loser new pack that isn’t doing that much harm is beyond me. Our days of serial murders are over, right now, besides dealing with you, we’re pretty boring! I’m sure your pack has better priorities, things much scarier for a bunch of scary alphas to take down than just a little nuisance of sitting ducks like us. You don’t want to add Scott and Derek to your numbers, trust me, they’re way too rag-tag and um, um, _doofy_ to be among your hardened, experienced, awesome ranks, right? Right?”

Stiles cuts off and gasps for air, not sure if he didn’t breathe enough during that or if he’s hyperventilating.

Deucalion’s already cloudy eyes go even more… well, Stiles doesn’t really know how to describe it. It’s like his face has been wiped of anything remotely human, which makes no sense because he was pretty emotionless before. It’s like his sculpted features shifted from flesh to candle-wax in a blink of an eye.

He throws his gaze around, looking for a change in the lighting or something that could explain this, but there’s nothing. Then Deucalion is back, nodding agreeably.

“Yes, you’re quite right.”

He taps his stick against the concrete sharply three times. “Kali, Ennis, time to go. Grab your things.”

“Deucalion?” Kali, the statuesque woman who has issues with pedicures, appears in the left-hand shadows where there must be a door or opening.

“We’re leaving,” Deucalion repeats with a mild smile. “I don’t believe we’re uncultured enough to pursue a pack of, well, sitting ducks. I’m sure our holy work is needed elsewhere.”

Kali looks as dumbfounded as Stiles feels, but that strange alpha-leader position must be real, because she doesn’t argue.

They leave.

“I can’t… that worked?” Stiles stammers into the empty darkness.

It takes the betas plus Derek plus Scott another two hours to find him. Of course.

“You owe me eggs,” he tells Derek.

-


	3. Time Flies When You're Having Fun

[3]

The clock stops.

One minute Stiles is staring at the clock above the chalkboard, the seconds ticking by glacially, muttering imprecations about Harris’s bloodline and other nonsense. The next minute, it’s… different. Not what happens when the clocks are reset during class, whirling through the hours and everyone laughs and jokes about time flying. Nope. One blink of an eye, and the clock has stilled to one hour ahead, no movement or change between. Just… different.

Stiles rubs his eyes. When that fails, he cranes his head around. The rest of the room is exactly the same.

One kid, Stiles’ thinks his name is Trevor or Tristan or something, is lounging in the backrow and Harris is scratching away on some tests at the front desk. Depressing and boring detention, per usual.

Not only has the clock shifted ahead, it’s stopped moving. This… is weird. And what’s weird is probably supernatural, because this is Stiles’s life now. He consults his List of Supernatural Shit That Needs Attention After the Life-Threatening Priorities but all that comes up is the jeep’s Lazarus Stunt and Deucalion’s ashen compliance.

One is an incident, two is a coincidence, but three. Three is a pattern.

But first he needs a second opinion, you know, to prove he’s not crazy.

Stiles twists his body around. Dammit, Trevor is asleep.

“ _Psst_!” he says, trying for soft but probably missing by a mile. He whips back and checks on Harris. Still absorbed in grading, great.

Stiles rips out a piece of notebook paper, crunches it into a ball, winces at the noise, then softly—but accurately, thank you—aims it at Trevor’s face.

Trevor jerks upright in his chair, grabbing the table before he topples to the floor. The glare he levels on Stiles is pretty impressive, considering that he’s used to being on the receiving end of psychopaths and murderous werewolves and psychopath murderous werewolves.

Stiles gesticulates at the clock. The tough-guy glare falls away as Trevor’s mouth falls open unattractively before the he begins packing up notebooks and producing that particular clatter only escaping students make.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Harris drawls without looking up from his work.

Trevor’s fleeing pauses. He sways on his feet in front of the desk, face scrunched up. “Time’s up, Teach.”

Harris deigns to bless Trevor with his sardonic gaze. “Mr. Gomez, detention has only just started. Return to your seat. Unless you’d like to join Mr. Stilinski in detention tomorrow as well?”

The expression that crosses Trevor’s face is probably supposed to be confusion but all Stiles can see is constipation.

“Harris, look,” Stiles pipes up before the other boy can have a conniption, pointing again at the clock.  
It is so, so sweet when the constipation jumps from Trevor’s face to Harris. To Trevor’s credit, he pulled it off much better.

“That’s—I swear, if either of you had anything to do—” Harris hisses, rifling through his bag, his words cutting off as he pulls out his phone.

Stiles waits for the angry constipation to smooth out into betrayed confusion. Then he books it.

As he bustles out of the school into the parking lot, he rewinds the past fifteen minutes, because he knows it was only fifteen minutes. Cursing Harris’s ancestry, check. Bitching about being the one caught outside the wrecked supplies closet after facing an evil faerie and given a week’s worth of detentions because Harris is the devil, check. Bitching about having to deal with fucking faeries now, oh my god, like werewolves weren’t enough, yes. And then—and then. His mental transcripts snag.

He had begged time to speed the hell up.

Heart pounding, Stiles fumbles for his phone.

It’s… now about seventeen minutes past the start of detention. So time itself didn’t shift, or something. But the telling of time supposedly did, at least within that room. He actually has some hair now, so he obliges himself by reaching up and yanking.

Three is a pattern.

Well, on the bright side, he has time now to get his mail before Dad sees it.

-

When Stiles gets home he’s not surprised to find his father absent, still at work.

He is surprised that his mail, which he knows is here, he was sent a nifty tracking email, is not on the doorstop.

It’s like his hands and feet have been plunged into buckets of ice.

He flies through the front door and up the stairs, flinging his bedroom door open. To his crushing relief, the package is sitting innocently on his bed, intact and mostly undisturbed.

“You okay?” Derek says from his desk chair.

Stiles wheezes as an answer, waving off Derek’s flat stare, and slumps against the doorframe. It’s not like he’s out of shape, he is just appallingly bad at handling so many shocks of anxiety in such a short time frame with anything approaching poise.

He should probably be surprised, or at least irritated, at Derek’s easy commandeering of his space, but he’s basically given up on that front.

It's a thing that they do.

They actually have what someone else might call quiet evenings in. Someone else might even say it's comfortable, like friendship. Someone else might say it's edging on date territory if you skipped all the awkward pre-rituals and jumped to being an old, married couple with all the nagging and worn fondness attached. Someone else needs to shut the hell up.

Stiles couldn't say how it really started beyond that one time when Derek was hunted by police and Stiles used his lustful body as bribery for the common good. There isn't a set date or schedule. Just every now and again, Derek is here, reading through whatever Stiles has compiled on the latest monster of the week or pestering him into researching so Derek can loom over his shoulder. Now that Stiles expects it whenever the latest crisis hits, he leaves out stacks of related reading because all the looming is going to make him prematurely gray.

It’s kind of shocking that the Sheriff currently seems to be limited to suspicions and long-suffering exhaustion, because Stiles has also kind of given up all subtlety. For chrissakes, he left out a packet of scanned pages from a fifteenth century grimoire Allison swiped from the Argents on the kitchen table. Sheriff didn’t even blink an eye. Stiles is planning on talking about demons loudly in the local diner at some point to test if Supernatural is accurate when it comes to bystander reaction.

“Do I want to know what you bought?” Derek says, this time with his nose tucked into Stiles’ latest research stack. Stiles wonders if Derek actually thinks he’s coming off as disinterested. He’s like one of those cats that ignores you but somehow ends up sitting a foot away from you in every room you’re in.

Stiles shakes his head and heaves himself to his feet. “Probably not, dude.” He flings his backpack onto the bed, ignoring the medium sized box. Great, now he’s acting like that cat.

“Don’t call me dude,” is the well-rehearsed reply.

Stiles snorts and squeezes past him to snag his laptop from the desk, making extra sure no parts of him touch Derek’s parts, and then folds himself on top of the coverlet.

For the next few moments, there’s only the sounds of Stiles typing away and Derek rustling through paper. Well, Stiles might also hum a lot, but he’s researching a new lead he came up with during his fifteen minutes of detention. Research necessitates humming.

“What did Harris get you for this time?” Derek prompts again, apropos of nothing.

Stiles looks up from his screen, a page of an old Irish historical account of changelings, and blinks at the werewolf. Derek’s wide cheekbones and stubbled chin are especially wide and stubbled today, but his eyebrows are relaxed above his eyes, also especially olive and striking today. He needs to close his blinds. Not that Derek would look bad in low-lighting, it’s that sunlight seems to leach away the serial killer vibes and replace it with majestic forest creature vibes, which is detrimental to Stiles’s health. And life, probably.

Stiles blinks again. Closes his mouth, says, “Oh, didn’t Scott tell you about our encounter yesterday? Yeah, well, after heroically saving many lives and facing down the ugly mother of faerie kind, all Harris saw was ‘disruption of class-time and destruction of property.’ At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he punished me for disturbing the peace by talking or, you know, breathing.”

Derek has the audacity to smirk.

“Hey, it’s not funny, asshole, I have a record!” Stiles grabs a pen and lobs it at his face. Derek catches it easily, with one hand, without looking. Stupid werewolf.

Then, to Stiles’ horror, he has the package in his hands in a flash of supernatural speed. “You’re not talking my ear off about this. Is it embarrassing?”

Because the horror will never end, Stiles can feel himself flushing hotly. He covers it up by manfully standing and squaring his jaw, putting a hand on the paper wrapped top of the box. “It’s not for the pack, so you keep your hairy mitts off. You don’t see me snooping in your mail,” he sneers, trying to tug the box back without damaging it.

Derek hangs onto it easily before ripping it out of Stiles’ grasp and tucking it behind his back.

"Well, it's mine now," he says, like the mature alpha he is. He raises his stupid muppet eyebrows. "You can have it back by paying me with cash or silence."

"Sorry, I have zilch," it’s like he’s watching this from the outside. He sees them, standing face to face, noses scant inches apart. This is his chance. Be smooth. "I have nothing to give except my willing, nubile body."

Oh god. Maybe he should've gone with the silence.

The muppet eyebrows make a break for freedom as Derek’s face pinches inward. Wearing a constipated expression like it’s going out of style—and what is it with everyone looking constipated today? Is Stiles the only one investing in fiber cereal?—Derek slowly, oh so slowly, hands back the box. The second his hands are empty, he steps back, _like actual-facts retreats_ into a corner of the room.

"Ah-ha! You fell for my devious plan!" Stiles says in a hilariously squeaky voice to cover the low pang of disappointment and hurt in his stomach.

Sheesh, Derek could've at least tried to look interested for like, a second, seriously. Offensive much?

The alpha coughs into his fist and stands rigidly. In the good old days, Stiles only ever saw two expressions on Derek: 1. Hysterical, I’m-going-to-bite-your-throat-out-with-my-bunny-teeth rage, or 2. devastating stony face of intimidation (Stiles occasionally likes to call it the Blue Steel of Death). The third expression Stiles only became privy to after Derek’s alpha power-trip died down and they fully started their grudging friendship: painful, unacknowledged awkwardness.

It is surprisingly depressing to see that third one again after weeks without it.

Derek gestures to the stack of faerie related research like he’s going to express gratitude for once, before dropping his hand, grabbing the papers, and escaping out the window. All while avoiding eye contact.

Stiles waits for about five minutes, letting Derek get out of hearing range, before fetching his exacto knife. Cutting through the brown tape, he carries the box over to the chess board set up and hidden within his closet. The black pieces are already decked out with pieces of yarn and little tags, important information and factors from when the alpha pack was an imminent threat. He’ll have to throw that away or at least tweak it.

Where the white pieces are meant to be, Stiles sets the personalized, miniature rubber ducks, digging around for two in particular.

He wasn’t lying when he said this wasn’t for the pack. Technically.

A rubber duck version of Queen Elizabeth replaces the white queen. Her red hair is in the wrong style, and not strawberry blonde, but it’s close enough to represent Lydia here.

In the king’s spot is, well, a king duck. It’s pink with a purple crown, because dammit this is Stiles’s board, and if he wants to secretly make Derek pink in his own domain, that’s his business. Right now especially his pettiness fills him with secretive glee.

When he’s done, Stiles sits and surveys his work.

He’s not exactly sure if rubber ducks instead of pieces changes the rules but again. His board. His business. His planned and practiced scenarios.

He might be human and weak, unexplained supernatural phenomena aside, but he is not going to be unprepared when the next crisis hits. He can’t predict everything, but he sure as hell will have an arsenal of contingencies and strategies.

He is never going to be stranded and helpless without a backup plan. Never again.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story-time: the nubile body quip is actually something I said to my friend once when she held my lunchbox hostage. It was extremely awkward but fortunately she also thought it was funny (I think. I hope). Of course, my immediate thought was "wow this would be fantastic fic fodder, yes, A+, must do", which is the real origin story for this fic, the end.
> 
> *Update, 11-7-15: So NaNoWriMo is going pretty well (despite the tears) and this fic has been put on hold FOR THIS MONTH. Unless something goes terribly wrong, I'll go back to updating and finishing this during December. Hopefully not (probably) while procrastinating finals studying.


	4. A Whole Lotta Nothing

[4]

 

 

“We have a substitute in English today.”

Stiles flails out of the inside of his locker and comes face to face with all five feet and three inches plus heels of Lydia Martin.

“I—okay?”

Lydia looks at him like he’s being dense on purpose to annoy her. Then again, she kind of always looks like that, so he’s not sure why she’s decided to approach him, now of all times.

“You got my texts, didn’t you?” she asks but then barrels on without giving him room to answer. “One of the bodies Allison and I found last night was Blake’s.”

It takes a second for things to connect in Stiles’ brain. Everything’s heavy from lack of sleep, since he sure as hell didn’t sleep after Lydia’s “found another body but we’re okay, go back to what you were doing, lol” text. Well, he might have mentally added the “lol” part. Right now there’s a headache burrowing its way into the side of his skull blocking any coherent thought.

He gets there though. “Holy shit, our English teacher is dead?!”

Lydia Martin is too poised to gossip. Instead, she collects information or investigates. From the way she leans forward and her eyes gleam, Stiles is about to get a big steaming pile of information.

“We talked to Deaton and Mrs. McCall last night. Apparently there were traces around Blake’s body and on her of the ingredients of a hallucinogenic. It looks like she had drugged and killed the other body before dying herself.”

“What the fuck,” Stiles says. “What is it with the faculty in this damn school.”

Lydia elegantly waves a manicured hand. Her nails are a calming shade of blue today. “Well, it certainly explains the others.”

Stiles realizes what she means with a cold, sinking sensation in his stomach. It’s not even horror, he’s all wrung out of horror. End of last week, halfway through his faerie-closet detentions, he had accompanied Lydia while she followed her tingling-spidey-senses of death. They had found a kid dead next to someone’s swimming pool. The pack had come to the consensus that it was the faerie, but it had rubbed Stiles wrong. He had even bandied around the idea of another serial murderer during the weekend’s pack meeting at Derek’s loft.

Being right doesn’t make him feel any better. Well, okay, he’s a little smug, but his face feels too numb to actually express it, so for now he’ll exercise modesty.

“Wait,” and of course Stiles’s brain decides to work when to comes to the gruesome, why is he surprised. “If she was the one killing people to death, who killed her?”

Lydia nods like a proud teacher. “Exactly. From the markings on her throat, we think it was our faerie friend. Deaton said that if there are fae to be found in an area, something like ritual killings disturbing the telluric currents is enough to provoke it out into the open.”

“Wow, Deaton was just a fount of information. How’d you get this much out of our favorite cryptic?” The last time Stiles had asked (pestered) Deaton about the world of the supernatural and the practical functions of mountain ash beyond magical venn diagrams, the vet had just looked at him mildly, and silently, for a full minute before walking away. 

“Oh,” Lydia tosses her hair, so he knows this is going to be good. “You know, he’s helpful if you’re not aggressive. Also, being possessed by Peter has both given me the experience and ammunition I need to subtly blackmail people emotionally.” She pauses and tilts her head. “And Scott was there. That helped.”

“Damn,” Stiles says, giving her a smile. He turns back to his haphazard locker, assuming he’s been dismissed. Lydia isn’t good on goodbyes or closing conversation. It’s usually at this point that she abruptly walks away or turns her attention to something else.

Which is why, a minute later of him wasting passing period time by shuffling papers and then just resting half inside the locker—yes, he knows this looks weird but he is beyond caring—he jumps violently when she speaks again.

"What's wrong with you?"  

Stiles bangs his head against the little shelf in the locker. Ugh, why do they even install those.  "Wha-what?" He pulls himself out and faces her again, clutching his head.

Lydia wears concerned steely determination as gracefully as her weaponized designer clothing. "You've been quiet and it's disturbing. It's not that faerie, is it? You said she didn't hurt you."

"What?" Lydia looks like she's about to stab him with a bobby pin so Stiles hurries to say something vaguely intelligent. "No, the only thing it hurt was my eyes, because wowza."

This doesn't seem to impress Lydia.

"You didn't see it, it was like some sort of wizened demon lady, okay? Like, it actually cackled. The only reason we know it's some sort of faerie is because it left a creepy faerie ring of wrinkled mushrooms."

"So, it's the alpha pack. From when you were captured. Have you been getting enough sleep?" Lydia continues like he hadn't said anything.

Stiles manages to swallow his knee-jerk answer, because yes, in fact, he hasn't been sleeping but that's not new or related to any one thing, really.

"Right," Lydia says decisively. Stiles internally curses the combination of his expressive face and Lydia’s genius. "Come with me, I know when the teachers’ lounge is empty, you're having a nap."

 "What?!"

 Ooh death eyes. Very pretty, very scary death eyes. They look olive in the bright hallway, lighter than even Derek’s.

"Jesus, Lydia, I'm fine! I've been thinking, is all! It's not like I'm bored or have a lazy life, okay?"

And deep skepticism is also attractive on Lydia Martin, no one is surprised.

Stiles stands his ground. Obviously not finished but smart enough to pick her battles and recoup, Lydia flounces down the hall.

Being filled in on the supernatural shenanigans hasn’t restored Lydia to her former full health, mental and otherwise. If anything, it’s made her stronger. After stopping Jackson’s fucked up metamorphosis, Lydia has undergone her own, except instead of killing people because of possession via psychopath, she’s risen in the ranks of all aspects of her life. She’s flaunting her genius, flourishing her friendship with a troubled Allison, and leaving a recovering Jackson on romantic tenter-hooks. While Derek comes to Stiles first for research or investigative back-up, and Stiles is permanently Scott’s wingman (suck it, Lahey), Lydia has quickly become the strategic heavyweight for the pack.

That’s aside from whatever she happens to _be_. Lydia might claim emotional blackmail and Scott’s puppy influence, but Stiles knows that she’s been meeting with Deaton to get a foothold on her Death Sense.

 It’s why she’s the queen of his board.

And, he realizes to his shock, he can think this without a trace of unrequited bitterness. A month ago he would've been over the moon (heh) about Lydia Martin paying him any kind of attention. Knowing this version of Lydia, reinvigorated and tenacious and magnificent, fulfilling what he mostly suspected was her true nature—he would have been ecstatic. Now though. Now he's just tired. And annoyed, because as dear as Lydia is to him, he knows she's far from the nurturing, caring type. If he's bad enough that she's decided to bully him with information and kindness, it must be stinking obvious.

 Which, seeing as no one else has bothered to pay him or his issues the slightest attention, says a lot about his so called friends and their priorities.

Okay, so maybe Lydia paying him attention does thrill him a little. But in a lonely sort of way, not like his old, dying crush. And from, you know, a place of hella respect.

Feeling worse than before, he trundles off to class and meets Scott at the door as the bell rings.

The edge of his BFF's uneven jaw is raw and shadowed. Scott isn't really a blusher, but his eyes are suspiciously misty for someone who's supposed to be broken hearted and single.

Gotta love those priorities.

 

-

 

Stiles comes to in stages. First his head, which is one big throbbing, swirling, pulsing mass. His ears are ringing. Then his neck, stiff, then his shoulders, strained. Arms which also throb. He wriggles, just slightly. Fucking hell, he’s trussed up like a pig again.

He opens his heavy eyelids. As his brain comes back online with his body he’s uncomfortably reminded of the kanima poison. Venom? Poison? He knew the difference once but everything’s too woozy for him to remember.

He can’t remember… what happened? The last thing he can recall is talking to Lydia this morning. At least, he thinks it was this morning.

His ankles really hurt and he can’t feel his feet. Stiles blinks, not really seeing anything and cranes his head down… which is actually up. Oh, so that’s what’s wrong with his head. Some asshole has decided to dangle him upside down from a tree in what looks like the middle of the woods. Fucking asshole. Fucking gravity. Fucking woods.

Fuck.

 Stiles makes an aggravated noise that rips out of the back of throat into the open air, loud enough that even he can hear it over the police sirens imbedded into his ear drums. Two startled birds burst across his topsy-turvy field of vision in a flurry of grayish feathers.

Why is it always him? He’s not the one with claws or super strength. Lydia is a genius and _something_ and Allison is like a scary mafia/Disney princess. If anyone should be thrown into these stupid as shit situations, it should be people who were are equipped to handle it. Honestly.

“Not faaaaair,” Stiles groans into the quiet trees. What, it’s not like anyone is around to hear him bitch.

Why isn’t anyone around to hear him bitch?

It’s decently light out, which either means that he was taken very shortly after his last recollection or… well.

He really hopes that it’s early enough that his dad has no clue. Is it too much to hope that his dad never knows about this? Whatever this is.

He either needs to figure this out or be rescued. Fast.

He’s dangling, swinging slightly from side to side after his half-hearted wriggle. Everything is pounding and he’s never regretted being a living, full-blooded person until now. He just wishes his body would shut up. He gets it. This sucks.

He really, really has to pee.

Wait… he tries to think around his heartbeat. Three time’s a pattern. Wishing. Maybe he can wish himself out of this.

“I really wish I wasn’t tied up,” Stiles says loudly.

Trees, quiet. Some insects trilling, a distant bird. His hair barely brushes against the ground on the slight downswing. Nothing.

“Gah!” Stiles tries to thrash around. It does nothing. Nothing, except the pain in his arms gets worse and he has to breathe tightly through the pressure against his skull.

“Come on!” he shouts. “You’ve been through this shit before! This is nothing!” Stiles rubs his arms as much as he’s able, feels something scratchy. “This is fucking rope! Peter, Gerard, kanima, alphas, _motherfucking fairies_! This is nothing! Get yourself together, Stiles! Feel nothing!”

And just like that… it becomes nothing.

Years or seconds later there's the hiss of rope being released in a rush and then the world lurches and the earth is rising up and slamming into him all along his side.

"Ow," he says from the ground.

"You have blood on your face. It's a surprisingly good look for you," Erica says from above.

The filtered, yellow-green forest light on her hair gives her a golden halo. It's so not fair.

Well, he's just been rescued, albeit painfully, so he'll be generous. "You're the werewolf Buffy the world deserves."

"But not the one it needs," she deadpans, because she's the best.

To prove it even further, she helps him to his feet with her wolf-Buffy strength.

"You're the best. You're my favorite out of all of Derek's ducklings." He gives her a smile, his lips and mouth feeling stretchy and loose. Actually, all of him feels stretchy and loose. Kinda tingly, too.

His legs collapse underneath him, all shakey and fawn-like. Heh, Bambi legs. So cute.

"Are you high right now?"

"All I need right now is a Thumper. Do you think Scott can hop?"

Erica's beautiful, beautiful face pinches. There’s that constipation again. These people need to eat their fiber.  

"Nah, that's a stupid question, I know he can, I mean, if you can do unnecessary backflips, you can hop, right? He'd make the cutest bunny."

"I'm calling Derek!" Erica says very loudly.

“Right, I guess he could be Thumper instead. He has the teeth. Have you seen them? Most adorable front teeth. In-con-gru-ous,” Stiles stretches out the last word like sweet taffy. He giggles.

Erica’s face rises and comes in and out of focus. Oh, he’s slumped and she’s propping him up. How nice of her. He watches the play of the forest light on her healthy, golden skin with a silly grin. She has some twigs and leaves caught in her perfect hair. If he had arms or hands, he’d reach up and take them out for her. But he doesn’t, so he settles for watching her speak into her phone with a worried furrow in her brow. If she doesn’t start smiling more, that’ll become one impressive wrinkle.

Stiles closes his eyes to the dulcet tones of Erica’s sharp, high-strung voice.

He doesn’t know why she's so stressed.

There’s nothing to worry about.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason it felt imperative that I finish this chapter and upload it before finals week. Wow, how about that. Wonder why that was.
> 
> Next update will be at least a week, probably over, unless something goes horribly wrong.


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